


Julia Dream

by TeaRoses



Category: Cowboy Bebop
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-27
Updated: 2010-02-27
Packaged: 2017-10-07 14:22:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/65987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeaRoses/pseuds/TeaRoses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Faye's feelings about life, death, and what never happened with Julia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Julia Dream

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the divergent_paths multi-fandom challenge on LiveJournal. The challenge was based on the movie "Family Man" and involved a character being shown a different path their life might have taken.
> 
> Since it is a Cowboy Bebop story, I have dared to title this after an early Pink Floyd song.

Faye was dizzy and half-drunk. That wasn't right, she could hold her liquor. But she'd been hitting it too hard in the two months since Spike had died. She'd been hitting everything too hard. Even Jet was a little tired of her by now, when he looked up from his work on the Bebop and his own mourning. She had to shape up. Maybe she would, eventually.

But she wasn't even on the Bebop now, she was on Earth. She had flown down in the Red Tail after some bounty head. She had argued with Jet, saying there were no bounties worth chasing on Earth, and he had yelled at her. Finally she had flown down with a bottle hidden under the seat.

This was all wrong. Spike would never have wasted his time on this penny-ante bounty, or on this asteroid target dirtball. If she had another partner... but there was no use thinking about that.

Faye heard a tap on the glass then. She looked up, then looked down. One bottle wasn't enough to make her see things. Maybe the lack of sleep had done it.

"Faye-Faye! Faye-Faye!"

It was Ed's voice, too. Was she dreaming? Probably. She opened the glass then though, and stared at her.

"Ed?" she asked

The red-haired girl nodded solemnly. "It's Ed."

Ed had her computer under her arm, and Ein wagged his tail by her side. It was as if no time had elapsed at all since she had disappeared from Faye's life. But it had been several months.

"Ed. What have you been doing? Why did you leave? Because of your father?" Faye had never quite caught up with that story.

"Ed is here, Ed is everywhere! Ed see Ed's father, but not now! Ed is here now!"

She still hadn't learned to make any sense.

"Ed, how did you find me?"

Ed pulled her goggles off her head. "Ed has something to show you!"

"Ed, what are you talking about?"

She pushed the goggles at Faye. "Put these on!"

Faye hesitated. She had never had anything but trouble from hackers. But Ed wasn't that kind of devious, to hurt Faye. Maybe this had to do with a bounty somehow. They needed the money.

Faye took the goggles and put them over her eyes. Suddenly she was on Mars. Not looking through a pair of goggles at a computer screen that showed her Mars, but on the planet itself. There was a building behind her that looked like a restaurant, and she was standing underneath an awning looking out at the rain on the street. She was dressed up in a sleeveless blue dress and pearls.

She turned to see a figure standing next to her, a beautiful blonde woman in a more modest purple dress. It took her a moment to realize who it was. She had only seen her in skintight black clothing before. This wasn't the first dream Faye had had about her, but most of the others had depicted her death. Some of the story of the circumstances of Spike's death had been told to Faye later by a survivor of the Red Dragons.

Sometimes Faye dreamed of Spike too, but often she dreamed of his lost angel.

"Julia?" said Faye.

When she heard herself speak, she realized she wasn't dreaming. But now she couldn't remember how she got here at all. All she could figure out was that she was on Mars, and that Julia was still alive somehow, but everything between now and the last time she had been on the Bebop was a blur.

Faye watched as Julia waved to a passing taxi. "Over here!" she shouted.

She put her hand on Faye's arm. "Come on, this will be nothing!"

Faye wanted to ask her what the hell was going on. But clearly she was supposed to know what was going on, and maybe it would be better if she didn't admit she had forgotten. Faye was familiar with forgetting. At least this time she remembered her name. She could feel her own gun against her hip, and it made her feel safe enough to play along for now. When the taxi pulled up to the curb, she ducked through the rain and got into the rear door on the passenger side. A gray-haired man in the driver's seat asked where they were headed.

"Bank of Ganymede on Center Street," said Julia as she sat down.

They were headed for the bank. Did that mean they had money? Faye listened to the rain make pinging noises on the roof of the car. She looked out at the buildings. As the passed the police station, she saw Julia move. She was pulling a gun! Faye reached for her pistol but then saw that Julia had the gun pressed against the driver's neck.

"We're stopping here, Abraham Menlo," said Julia.

The driver muttered "Shit," and pulled the car over.

Julia used to other hand to retrieve a phone from her pocket. A few police officers came out of the building and soon Abraham Menlo was being dragged out of the car in handcuffs.

Julia turned to Faye, "Well that was an easy three million. I'll go get it, unless you want to."

So they had been hunting a bounty together. As Julia slammed the car door behind her, Faye suddenly remembered. Julia was her partner. Why had Faye had the idea that she had died? They had been partners since that day Faye had saved her from the syndicate. She had asked her if they could join up together, and Julia had hesitated and said yes. What Julia had really wanted was to see Spike again, and Faye had known that. But the syndicate had attacked again before Faye could get her there. She had managed to smuggle Julia off-planet and neither had been able to get back to the Bebop.

Faye knew Julia was desperate to get to Spike by then, but the syndicate had also caught up with him. When Spike and Vicious had killed each other a few days later Faye had not been surprised, but she was surprised when Julia had stayed with her. She knew it was only because even with the syndicate destroyed, Julia had nowhere else to go. But in the end it had been a good thing, hadn't it?

Faye was still sitting there, slowly remembering the blank expression on Julia's face when she had heard the news of Spike's death, when Julia herself opened the door and beckoned her out.

"Do you want to go back to Venus now or get a hotel?"

"Let's catch another cab and get a hotel," said Faye.

Julia was silent on the cab ride, which gave Faye more time to think. She was even remembering the research she had done to find Abraham Menlo now. Faye was no hacker but had learned how to get information. Julia had been a good partner. They weren't always barely scraping along the way the Bebop crew had. Julia managed the money, and she didn't let Faye gamble it all away. She found that sort of control easier coming from Julia then she might have from someone else. They had a nice little apartment on Venus, though they chose not to have their own ship. And Faye often visited Earth, though she had never found any relatives or any more of her past even after all this time.

All this didn't mean Faye was always happy. She smoked and gambled too much. Sometimes life seemed to damn hard and she complained. Occasionally she called Jet just to yell at him, or to remember Spike.

As for whether Julia was happy, Faye didn't know, or she told herself she didn't know. She never spoke of Spike, and Faye never dared bring the subject up. Julia thought too much, and was silent too often. Sometimes she sang to herself in that lovely voice, but she never sang to Faye. She was still in many ways a mysterious angel that Faye was only so close to. But now she was Faye's angel too, and that was good enough. wasn't it?

They went to a modest hotel and got adjoining rooms. Faye was comfortable now; she wasn't sure what had caused her earlier memory glitch. She wasn't surprised when Julia came into her room with her, or when she reached out to Faye and kissed her.

She remembered this too, the taste of Julia's mouth and the way her skin and hair felt. They undressed slowly and if Julia never quite met her eyes, Faye had learned not to mention it. There was a happiness in having someone to touch and call beautiful, even if they didn't speak while you made love to them. When Julia left Faye's room for her own, that was also as usual. She never liked to be held through the night.

Faye knew she was crying as she often did, though Faye never interrupted those times. Julia wanted to seem strong, even if it also made her seem cold. But Faye had so many questions. Was she crying because Faye wasn't Spike? Did she felt guilty surviving while he had died? And most of all why couldn't she talk to Faye, cry in her arms, feel something they could share? Faye almost wanted to cry herself, but she smoked several cigarettes and finally calmed down enough to sleep.

That was when she blinked her eyes and saw the inside of the goggles. She wondered for a moment if this was a dream but then it all came crashing down. Julia had been the dream. She felt Ed's hand rip the goggles from her face.

"Was it better, or was it bad?"

Faye stared at her.

"It was... nothing I could ever explain," she said finally.

Ed nodded and for once didn't talk back.

"I have to go, Ed. But will you come back to the Bebop with me? I'm sure Jet would like to see you and Ein."

Ed laughed. "No... no goggles for Jet!"

"That wasn't what I meant," said Faye.

But Ed was already running away and calling a sing-song of good-byes over her shoulder. Faye didn't understand anything now. She readied the Red Tail for take-off. Jet could catch his own damn bounty.

Faye wasted no time on the existential question of what reality was and whether she had really seen Ed just now. But she thought about Julia in the dream. Wasn't it always better to be alive than dead? Shouldn't Julia have had the chance do that? Shouldn't she have been able to be a breathing human, to live and struggle with her sadness the way Faye had, instead of ending up crumpled on the ground like a butterfly crushed under a boot? Or was she one of those people who are only in the world for certain people to touch, and are meant to pass out of it when they are gone?

As for Faye, she could easily say where she had been happier, but that wasn't even the whole point. By the time she reached the Bebop she was crying, and not only for herself.


End file.
